South and North Korea agreed Thursday to meet Saturday to discuss reopening a jointly operated industrial complex, three weeks after their last effort to start a dialogue collapsed amid mutual recriminations.

If the meeting, to be held in the border village of Panmunjom, takes place as planned, it would provide the two Koreas with an opportunity to move toward a thaw after years of tensions that hit a peak this year, when the North's third nuclear test led to international sanctions and the North issued a stream of threats against the South and its ally, the United States.

North and South Korea have bickered over the fate of the Kaesong industrial park in the North Korean border town of the same name, ever since the North pulled out all 53,000 of its workers from the complex in April, citing military tensions it said stemmed from joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises at the time.

The owners of 123 South Korean factories who had withdrawn from Kaesong after their North Korean workers deserted them have been eager to return there.